- Member of Parliament
- Caucus Chair
- NDP
- Cowichan—Malahat—Langford
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,733.69
- Government Page
- Jun/4/24 10:20:16 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, what I would say to my hon. colleague is that on the whole spectrum of the food supply chain, there are the farmers at one end and the consumers at the other. I would argue that both groups are being screwed over by the people in the middle. That is what is happening.
I am not talking about going after farmers; they need to make a living, and I know their margins are very tight. I am not talking about consumers. It is the actors in the middle, the middlemen, and particularly the grocery companies, which despite all of the costs associated with climate change and supply disruptions have still seen their net profits go up to unacceptable and unreasonable levels.
That is what we should be tackling. That is what Canadians expect. If we had an activist government actually doing that, we would actually see the results Canadians want and need at this very key moment.
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- Jun/4/24 10:06:01 a.m.
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moved:
That, given that the cost of food continues to increase while grocery giants such as Loblaws, Metro and Sobeys make record profits, the House call on the government to:
(a) force big grocery chains and suppliers to lower the prices of essential foods or else face a price cap or other measures;
(b) stop delaying long-needed reforms to the Nutrition North program; and
(c) stop Liberal and Conservative corporate handouts to big grocers.
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- Mar/22/24 11:30:26 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, as Canadians observe Ramadan and Easter this month, many are scrambling to put food on the table. Organizations such as Feed Ottawa are working hard to make sure no one is left behind, but it should not be up to them alone. The Conservatives refused to help, voting against a school food program to feed kids, and the Liberals are way too busy protecting the profits of grocery CEOs.
The NDP has been pushing for a national school food program to ensure no child goes hungry. Will the Liberals include it in the upcoming budget?
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- Jan/31/24 6:03:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, related to the economic measures in this bill, it is no secret that the massive profits we are seeing in some corporate sectors and the high food price inflation Canadians are facing are directly linked. We have heard the Minister of Industry express many times in the House and out in the public that he is disappointed with grocery CEOs who have seen their profits and profit margins double since 2019.
I would just like to know when the Liberal Party is going to get serious on this, tackle the corporate greed and make sure that food prices start to go down for Canadians so they can afford to feed their families.
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Mr. Speaker, I always appreciate the chance to speak about agriculture in the House. I am a bit disappointed because I was hoping to speak to Bill C-58 today.
My hon. colleague will know, given that he serves on the committee with me, that we are revisiting this issue. We recently had four of the five grocery CEOs appear before our committee. Of course, in particular, Mr. Galen Weston tends to stand out. He is the one the media seems to be interested in.
What I found interesting when Mr. Weston appeared before our committee is that he did not seem to be aware of how many of his employees are accessing a food bank in order to get by. This is a man who commands a benefits package worth about 431 times that of his average employee.
The point I really want to get to is that Mr. Weston's company, Loblaws, is one of the two holdouts on joining a grocery code of conduct. I want my hon. colleague to explain this to members of the House. If we have Walmart and Loblaws step out of the grocery code of conduct, what is that going to do for the remaining players? What does he think the federal government, in partnership with the provinces, should do as a next step? Does he believe that it is time to start enforcing a mandatory code as a result?
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague from Elmwood—Transcona for his speech and also for his interventions with other members of this House. We have been studying this issue in depth at the agriculture committee and I have had the chance to question multiple CEOs; notably Galen Weston of Loblaw.
The problem is that we can see the data and everyone talks about small margins in the grocery sector. The fact of the matter is that the margins have actually doubled since the pandemic and the grocery chains are making record profits and they do have gross amounts of executive pay. Mr. Weston's compensation is 431 times the average salary of his employees. We know from unions representing grocery workers that in many cases those workers cannot afford to shop where they work. None of the CEOs could tell me how many of their employees are using food banks to get by.
I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on the fact that through both Liberals and Conservatives we have a policy, over the last 40 years, of too much corporate deference in this country and not enough hard analysis of how we are letting corporations get away with this. Canadians are being asked to shoulder the blame while corporations are continuing to make a lot of money off their backs.
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- Dec/4/23 2:31:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the holidays are coming up, and parents are stressed about covering presents for the kids and managing the costs of a turkey dinner. Meanwhile, Canada's biggest grocery chains are making bucketloads of excess profit. While families struggle this holiday season, the Liberals are offering families a lump of coal with no solutions and just words, but the NDP is getting results. We have summoned the grocery CEOs back to testify on food prices, and Sobeys is here today.
Will the minister take this opportunity to put his foot down on unchecked price gouging that is driving up food prices?
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- Dec/1/23 11:28:24 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this coming Monday, the CEO of Sobeys will be back to testify about food prices.
For two years, the Liberals have been beating around the bush both on bringing food prices down and on standing up to grocery CEOs. Anyone can tell us that the minister's little meeting, where he asked the rich CEOs nicely to stop gouging Canadian grocery shoppers, had no impact.
By bringing back the grocery CEOs, the NDP has given the minister a chance to right his wrongs, so will the Liberals crack down on the out-of-control price gouging?
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- Nov/29/23 4:59:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is another member of the agriculture committee. It is nice to see us bringing an agriculture report to the House for deliberation.
In my time working with my colleague, she has been very outspoken on the grocery code of conduct. We have it here in the report as part of recommendation 16, and we did hear recently that Loblaw in particular has some problems with the code.
I am wondering if she could give her thoughts to the House on why such a code is important and why it should be mandatory, considering the power imbalance that exists between grocery chains and the hard-working producers and processors, who have been dinged with all of these hidden fees. Could she explain to other members of the House, who may not be familiar with this issue, why it is important and why it is so central to really strengthening Canada's processing capacity?
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- Oct/17/23 5:06:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I enjoy serving with my colleague on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.
I would agree with her that the Conservatives have concocted a false narrative about the real causes of inflation. They are willfully ignoring what all of the evidence can show anyone who takes the time to look. The unfortunate thing is that the Liberals have been asleep at the switch and have allowed that false narrative to take root.
We have seen 22 months of rising food inflation and people are making difficult choices at the grocery store, yet the minister responsible for that file is only just now giving a stern talking to to grocery CEOs. Canadians are suffering and watching massive corporate profits, and what are those same corporations doing? They are laying off workers and using all of that profit to do stock buybacks and massive dividend payouts, which are often going to foreign investors and not benefiting people in Canada. We have all of this stuff happening.
Does my hon. friend across the way believe her government should be doing more, and what should those steps be? We have an incredible amount of wealth being generated in Canada, but it is going to fewer and fewer people. That is what needs to change for people to have confidence in the economy again.
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- Oct/17/23 2:56:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' out-of-touch plan of nicely asking rich grocery CEOs to lower prices has not worked. Wishing and hoping that rich CEOs will do the right thing will not help families put food on the table. Grocery prices are still going up after 22 months. Canadians expect action, but the Liberals are out to lunch, and the Conservatives are all words and have no real plan.
When is the minister going to get real about helping Canadian families, and support the NDP's plan to lower food prices?
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- Oct/16/23 2:16:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today is World Food Day and we must turn our attention to the food insecurity and hunger that is plaguing our country. We have nothing to celebrate here in Canada. Food bank use is at its highest level in Canadian history, with more working families relying on food banks just to get by. Every week, Canadians are making difficult choices when they visit the grocery store.
The food crisis in Canada did not happen overnight. We got here because it is the natural conclusion of decades of corporate-friendly neo-liberal economic policies that both the Liberals and Conservatives have championed. When corporate greed gouges the farmer who grows the food, gouges the trucker who ships the food and then gouges everyone who is trying to buy the food, we get the out-of-control food-price inflation that is hurting Canadian families.
On this World Food Day, the entire NDP caucus and I renew our pledges to fight corporate greed, so that Canadians are no longer struggling to feed themselves.
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- Oct/6/23 11:48:49 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is Thanksgiving weekend and three out of five Canadians are being forced to take healthy food out of their carts because of the cost. After two years of inaction, the Liberals' out-of-touch solution is to leave it up to rich grocery CEOs. We know Conservatives have no serious plans to confront corporate greed. A year ago, the NDP successfully launched an investigation into food prices and now we have a bill that will lower prices, not just stabilize them.
Will the Liberals do the right thing and support the NDP's plan to lower food prices?
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- Jun/12/23 3:07:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, families have been struggling to keep up with growing food prices, forcing kids to turn to school lunch programs.
The Breakfast Club of Canada now provides breakfast for more than 600,000 students. Two years ago it was just over 250,000. Canadian nutrition programs cannot keep up with the demand or the cost to feed students as grocery prices soar.
The Liberal government needs to stop dragging its heels. Will the Liberals make sure our students are fed by immediately setting up the national school food program?
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- Apr/27/23 9:55:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I hear Conservatives expressing concern about inflation. With what is going on at the grocery stores, where is the outrage against Loblaws, Empire and Metro? With what is happening at the gas pumps, where is the outrage against Imperial Oil and Shell, which have seen profits go up by 1,000% since 2019? When people are paying more on interest rates for their mortgages, where is the outrage against CIBC, Toronto Dominion and RBC?
For Conservatives to stand in this place and manufacture this outrage but completely ignore the insane levels of corporate profit, they are just doing a disservice to their constituents.
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- Feb/13/23 2:44:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are doing everything right, but they are still having to stretch their budgets to keep up with rising food costs. All the while, grocery companies are making billions. The math is not adding up. All parties agreed with the NDP to initiate a greedflation study, but the Liberals have continued to stand by while CEOs are raking in record profits.
People want the government to hold grocery chains accountable for their role in food prices. Why do the Liberals let grocery CEOs off the hook, letting them wriggle out of their responsibilities and refusing to charge a windfall profits tax?
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- Feb/2/23 2:46:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are making tough choices about what they can and cannot afford because grocery prices are so unbelievably high. Today, Loblaws decided to stop the price freeze they put in place under considerable public pressure. This proves that grocery CEOs can control what people pay. The government has to take a stand against the corporate greed that is hurting Canadian families. Enough is enough.
When are the Liberals going to put in place a windfall profits tax against corporate greed and put that money back into the pockets of Canadian families, who need it?
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Madam Speaker, it is indeed a great honour to rise today to speak to the government's bill, Bill C-32, which is an act to implement some of the measures announced in the fall economic statement just a few weeks ago before we were all home for the week of Remembrance Day in our respective ridings.
Many of my colleague from all parties have spoken about this, but this comes at a time of great struggle for constituents in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. Overwhelmingly, the correspondence I get in my office regards the high cost of living and the fact that their wages are not keeping up.
We know that the increase in food prices is forcing families to make very difficult decisions at the grocery store. For that reason I am very glad to have won the unanimous support of the agriculture committee to commence a study into that and to have also had a unanimous vote here in the House of Commons acknowledging that this is a very real problem and supporting our committee's work in the weeks ahead. I, for one, am looking forward to hearing representatives of large grocery stores speak to what their companies are prepared to do to address this issue.
There is, of course, the high cost of fuel. The war in Ukraine has sent shockwaves through the energy world. We know this because Russia is a major exporter of oil and gas. Through their geopolitical manoeuvring and attempts to punish countries that are supporting the Ukrainian people in their fight for freedom and in their fight to halt Russian aggression, we have a situation where fuel prices for all sorts of fuels have spiked dramatically.
We have a very real problem of private companies involved in those industries engaging in what I would, frankly, call war profiteering. They are taking advantage of geopolitical tensions to rake in billions of dollars of profit, at a rate that we have never seen in this country before.
As for our health care system, and I think that this is the big sleeper issue in Canada that is only just now starting to get the attention it deserves, it has gotten so bad in my riding that, while it falls largely under provincial jurisdiction, constituents are now coming to me as a federal member of Parliament and pleading with me to do something.
We need to have a nationally focused amount of attention on this crisis. We need to have a Canada where people can be assured that they can have access to primary care when and where they need it. We need to find innovative solutions to help this crisis and address it. I am disappointed that the recent meeting between provincial ministers and the federal minister has yet to result in anything concrete to address the crisis.
Of course, while Canadians are struggling, they see a situation in which it was reported that we collected $31 billion less in corporate taxes than we should have last year. At a time when Canadians are struggling with costs to make their own family budgets work and are seeing more and more of the burden falling on their shoulders, they see Canada's largest and most profitable corporations getting away with it, through innovative tax schemes and hiding their wealth offshore to escape the burden of paying their fair share in this country. That is an issue that we absolutely must pay attention to.
In response to these big issues, my friends in the Conservative Party have focused a lot of their attention on the carbon tax. Yesterday, at the agriculture committee, I agreed with my Conservative colleagues in taking a small step to address some of the challenges that our agricultural producers are facing. We will be reporting Bill C-234 back to the House.
However, on the larger issue, I think that what is ignored by my Conservative friends is the fact that the federal carbon tax does not apply in all provinces. What they are advocating for will have no effect on residents in my province of B.C. because we, as a province, have chosen not to have an Ottawa-knows-best approach on pricing pollution.
We, as a province, have preferred to retain autonomy, so our policy is determined in the B.C. legislature in Victoria under the good and sound guidance of the B.C. NDP government. It allows our province to basically take that revenue and distribute it in ways that it sees fit because we, as a province, do not think that Ottawa should have control over that policy, so we, as a province, have decided to retain autonomy.
The Conservatives' fixation on the carbon tax does not take into account the fact that the inflationary pressures we see in the world are the result of things that are largely beyond the control of Canada as a country. In the United Kingdom, the Labour opposition is blaming a Conservative government for the same thing Conservatives in Canada are blaming a Liberal government for. This is a problem we see in many of the G7 countries. It is not limited to one side of the political spectrum or the other.
Again, if one is going to talk about inflationary pressures and completely ignore the massive profits oil and gas companies are making, one is doing a disservice to one's constituents. One is not addressing the elephant in the room here, which is that corporations are using inflation to hide and to pad the massive profits they are making. We need to have a serious conversation about that.
If we truly want to help Canadians with the unexpected costs that come with heating their homes and fuelling their vehicles, we need to develop policies to get them off fossil fuels. It has always been a volatile energy source. If we go back to the 1970s when OPEC, as a cartel, decided to cut production, we see what that did to North America. It has always been volatile, and as long as we remain dependent on it as an energy source, no matter what the tax policy is, we are going to suffer from that volatility. If we want to truly help Canadians, we need to encourage things such as home retrofits, and encourage programs that get them on different sources of energy.
In the meantime, if we want a policy that is effectively going to help Canadians no matter what province they live in, why do we not go with the NDP policy of removing the GST on home heating fuels? That, in fact, would benefit residents in British Columbia, unlike singly focusing on a federal carbon tax.
When I look at Bill C-32, there are certainly a few good things. I appreciate that the Liberals are starting to see things such as a Canada recovery dividend are necessary. They are limiting it to the large financial institutions. We would like to see such a model be not only not temporary but also extended to oil and gas companies and to the big box stores. This is about putting fairness into the system because right now the free market, the so-called free market, is largely failing Canadians. The free market is trying its best, but the wages are not keeping up with rising costs.
One thing members have not yet mentioned either is that there is a critical mineral exploration tax credit in Bill C-32. Canada has a very troubled history with mining, and any projects that go forward need to absolutely be done in conjunction and in consultation with first nations. If we are truly going to transform our economy into the renewable energy powerhouse it should be, those critical minerals that Canada has an abundance of are going to be key to developing that kind of technology.
What I have often found with the Liberals over my seven years of being in this place is that there are a lot of good ideas but they are not fully fleshed out. They do not go as far as they could have potentially gone to make the full impact we wish they would have done.
There is a lot in Bill C-32 for the committee to consider, and I hope it takes a lot of feedback from a wide variety of witnesses. There are measures here that are building on what we, as new Democrats, have been able to force the government to do, such as doubling the GST credit, providing an interim benefit for dental care and making sure there is help for renters.
I am proud that a caucus with less than 10% of the seats in the House of Commons has been able to achieve these things. This is what I came to Ottawa to do. I came to deliver for my constituents and bring tangible results that make a difference in their lives. Through this and other measures, I will continue to do that, to make sure they are getting the full benefits and assistance they need to weather these tough times so they can come out even more prosperous on the other end.
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- Oct/31/22 7:10:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a record number of Canadians are having to resort to food banks right now. This is a shocking statistic for a country as wealthy as Canada. We can juxtapose that with the record profits grocery chains are making. Canadians are seeing the high prices of food, looking at the record profits oil and gas companies are making and juxtaposing that with the high prices Canadians are paying at the pumps.
I am glad to see the Liberals followed our lead and agreed to bring in things such as dental care, the rental benefit and doubling the GST credit. These are things we have been calling for for quite some time, and I am glad to see the Liberals follow our lead on this, but more needs to be done.
More needs to be done, and Canadians need to see their government will no longer let corporations and rich CEOs pad their wallets and use inflation as an excuse for doing so. Therefore, I am looking for a commitment from the parliamentary secretary to see that instituted, followed up on and brought forward in the fall economic statement.
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- Oct/28/22 11:46:41 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, families are being forced to turn to food banks at record rates because they cannot keep up with rising food prices. People are angry that their wages stay the same while rich CEOs are driving up costs to make millions.
The Liberals have a responsibility to support Canadians. Instead, they have let CEOs hide their massive profits behind inflation. When will the Liberals tackle corporate greed in the grocery sector to help families with their food bills?
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